No, but I’m glad the effort to name it the USS Robert Heinlein failed.
The biggest news in this thread is that the OP returned. I guess there’s no class today, what with Thanksgiving break and all.
Wow! There really is a first for everything. Threads started by BK - 1800. Total posts by BK - 1801. 
I don’t know why Dopers need to ridicule OP: contrasting the waste on a boondoggle with money spent usefully is worthwhile, but seems to be beyond the ken of Congress. And it’s wrong to say the spending was OK because it went to American workers: are building bridges and breaking windows equally valuable if the same numbers of workers are employed?
Twenty billion dollars may be chickenfeed compared with bigger Pentagon blunders but this one looks like it was knowably stupid from the get-go. The Navy already had a method of evading radar detection: Submersion.
It’s too bad that students, unlike General Dynamics and Northrop Grumman, cannot afford million-dollar lobbyists.
Do you understand the concept of deterrence?
Wouldn’t that be 19?
Because he is rediculous. Had he posted “I like puppies” in the Pit, I’d fire off a few snarky comments about him as well. Just because.
Get Mr. Scott on the job. He’s a miracle worker. He’ll have the Zumwalt shipshape in no time.
How about an Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator?
Ridiculous. One of my many spelling pet peeves.
No, I mean he is diculous and he does it over and over again. Re-diculous.
That’s a little misleading.
The ship has some 80 VLS cells, as well as the 155mm gun, which is still useful without the LRLAP rounds, as it can fire unguided artillery shells. As a matter of fact, only 10% of the ammo loadout was expected to be the guided LRLAP shells anyway.
And I suspect the OP doesn’t get the idea of a sunk cost. That R&D has been done- you can’t get it back. So at this point, the government has the option of either continuing to produce more destroyers, which will push the per-ship price down, or cut their losses and only build a handful, at a much higher total cost, in part because the R&D cost is distributed across the ships.
As for the mechanical failures, they seem to be, if not common, at least not unheard of during the initial phases of the first ships of a class. The Freedom class littoral combat ships are having propulsion teething pains as well.